


i'll close your eyes so you can't see

by cerealmilk



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Agender Character, Deep Talks at Midnight, Gen, MEKA backstory that isn't angsty, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Road Trips, Slow Dancing, spoiler alert: no happy ending, this won’t be finish bc im tired and its not angsty enough, zen has never been in a car before
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-11-28 14:34:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11420019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerealmilk/pseuds/cerealmilk
Summary: (This very hour, come and go with me.)When she has nowhere else to go, she runs. This time, someone decides to tag along.





	i'll close your eyes so you can't see

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ( _I’m trying, but I’m gone through the glass again. Just come and find me._ ) - "graceless," the national

When Hana has nowhere else to go, she runs.

Of course, 'running' is a general term that has been and is more often replaced with many things that aren’t actually _running_ , per say, but still fall under that broad category of escape that she has _so tactfully_ dubbed... ‘running.’

Right. Oh, and it’s against the law. Yay.

She tries not to do it often. Really, she does. It’s common knowledge that they all need to be ready and present should they be called in for a mission or the world demands their presence, but it’s unavoidable. It is somewhat painful to admit that she has become dependent on these little getaways of hers, but it’s true.

Running is addicting and she is hopelessly, helplessly addicted.

And running isn’t physical. For the most part, at least. It’s more like… a failsafe. No, no, that’s too macabre. Running is… an oxygen tank. The world is made of water and this is how she breathes.

Sometimes, running is taking a dropship and flying out for twenty miles, just enough to let the tension of the base run off, and then flying back. Sometimes, running is taking long strolls in the cool air of the outside of the watchpoint that typically accompany the cowl of midnight, one foot in front of the other until she winds up back at where she’d started. Sometimes, running is hopping into the nearest available car and not returning for several days. Or until she feels like she has strained the boundary of her freedom enough.

Sometimes, running is just that— running. As hard and as fast and as far as she can before her thoughts quiet, before her heart stops beating double time, before the claws around her chest finally ease up enough for her to sleep.

Hana likes running. She has always been something of an adrenaline junkie, for better or for worse. The feeling of freedom it grants, to not be anyone's idol for a night, to not be the world's warden, to not have to be anything— running grants her the freedom to just _be_.

Running is that burst of freedom as soon as she presses the button to open the bay doors. Running is her safe place when the world goes dark. Running is the clean slate when she can’t forget who she is.

And right now, ‘running’ is sitting in the kitchenette on the third floor of Watchpoint: Kathmandu, gazing out across the icy slopes of the Himalayas with a mug of tea steeping in her hands. The watchpoint is imbedded in the cliff face, only a few concealed windows belying the true nature of the hidden fortress. It looms over the courtyard of some sort of monastery, which is hidden, now, due to the dark of the night and the clouds that come with having a base at such a high altitude.

Running is this— alone at a table meant for two with nothing but the quiet thoughts in her head and the cup in her hands. The peace is nice. There are only five agents in the base, after all, so it isn’t like it would be very loud, anyhow.

She, Fareeha, Zenyatta, Reinhardt, and Mei are there to run operations for a few weeks. Mainly surveillance and checking up on the Watchpoint after it had been abandoned for seven years. It’s less exciting than what she is used to, but it’s nice being away from the field. She had become so used to violence that she’d almost forgotten what it was like to lie low. Evidently, it isn’t a common occurrence.

Kathmandu is beautiful at night. Or, at least, that which she can see is. Small lights in a dark void with the faint silhouettes of geographic giants crowding the horizon. The silence is calming and she wonders if anywhere else in the world is as quiet as this. One might even think war had never graced these lands, if they hadn't paid any attention in history class.

History class. Now _that_ is an old topic.

It all seems so far away now— school, civilian life, the chance to be normal. Which, to be fair, she had, until eSports hit her like a punch to the gut. All of that, only three years ago. And then there had been drone testing and a crash course in chemical engineering and then an even faster course in piloting and then _death_ and scenes vaguely reminiscent to the old game _Shadow of the Colossus_ or something—

And then... Overwatch.

Three years, huh? What a mess.

Hana sets the tea bag on the table and takes a long drink, letting the heat of the drink burn her thoughts into submission, the gentle taste of plum tea washing over the vague taste of sweat and salt water in the back of her throat, and her heart takes notice of this and begins to slow back down.

Running isn’t always adrenaline. Sometimes, it’s doing whatever she can to avoid it. (Sometimes she thinks ‘running’ is too broad a term for it, but that’s all it is, really— running. It just depends on what she’s running from.)

She has gotten better. Mostly. Getting there. It’s a... work in progress.

Kathmandu is helping though. The calm atmosphere, so untouched and unscathed by war, the peaceful unity of omnic and human alike in the large city, the colorful buildings and even more colorful flags lining the streets, the Shambali monastery several hundred feet below... out of all the watchpoints she has been to, this one is by far her favorite.

Hana leans back in her seat with a sigh, resting her tea on her stomach. The clouds outside have cleared somewhat. The moon is a waxing gibbous; it will be full in a few days time. They will leave for another abandoned watchpoint in ten days, once they’ve finished setting up everything here. For a team of five, they manage to work pretty quickly at getting these watchpoints up and running again.

Fareeha handles fixing communications networks, which typically means climbing up sheer walls of the base to bang on the satellite dish or to sift through over a thousand encrypted Overwatch channels to find the ones leading to every reactivated watchpoint. It’s a tedious job that only a saint could have the patience to manage.

Mei and Zenyatta are there to get the research labs and thermostats up and running again. Mei because she knows the material well and knows how to safely get it working again; Zenyatta because he is able to notice even the most minute problem in something and, where a working research lab is the fine line between results and blowing up the whole base, having his scanners there is a cyclopean relief.

Reinhardt is there for the heavy lifting. He pulls wall panels apart with his bare hands and lifts in the crates of new equipment that not even Fareeha can carry. He is also there to help with maintenance, such as getting the power back up and making sure it stays that way and checking up on the boilers and filters. He’d learned a thing or two from Brigitte during his years of ‘retirement.'

Hana is there for the nitty gritty repairs. She’s small, and can fit through the holes Reinhardt tears in the walls to fix up the particularly janky pieces of machinery. 

Yesterday, she’d had to fix the engine to the water heater, which had involved her squeezing through a narrow crack in the wall that Reinhardt couldn't even fit his _arm_ through with a harness around her waist, a toolbox in her hands, and nothing but Reinhardt and Fareeha keeping her from falling four hundred feet and dying in a beautiful red splat in the streets of Kathmandu.

She has washed her hands eight times now since then and they are still stained black with grease, oil, and whatever other grime has managed to work its way into the gears of everything in seven years.

It feels almost surreal, to be flying all over the world resurrecting dead bases in the hope that, someday, Overwatch will be bigger than what it is. Maybe she can convince Winston to recruit someone closer to her own age so that she isn’t the token minority anymore. These older soldiers aren’t part of the new generation— she can’t talk to them about the genius that is fusion power— a crossbreed between hydraulics and the recent discovery that plasma can be pressurized into concentrated bullets for explosive damage at close range.

She can’t talk to them about the tech she knows because they don’t know it, haven’t heard of it, and have never seen it in the lab. The closest anyone had come to seeing what the young minds of the engineering devision back in Busan had created is the technological masterpiece that is her giant pink mech.

They don’t know how long it took to perfect the molecular reconstruction of a broken mech once the failsafe was pressed, the calculations to redirect those particles to the satellite converter, how long it took to master the coordinates and timing of materializing a new mech as close to the pilot as possible without crushing them or anything around them— they don’t even know what it’s _called_.

(They named it “KERRIGAN"— the first working Particle Recovery and Recall Cannon, or PRRC for short. The kids in MEKA just called it a “percy.”)

It is _beyond_ advanced. But Overwatch is old school to her and thus, so is everyone in it, and so the blueprints she sketches up when she can’t sleep, the unfinished schematics she had long ago concocted with what was left of her team as they ran ideas by each other, upgrades to add, changes to make— they remain unfinished. She doesn’t have her thirty brains working as one.

MEKA had hired them for their creativity and every cadet had eagerly snatched up the reins.

She just wishes she wouldn't have to use encrypted channels to communicate with them, should she ever attempt to, to finish these schematics, to ask how they’ve been. Having someone nearby to talk to would also be convenient, but impossible. The closest she’s gotten to a technological buddy was with Fareeha, and Fareeha is cool and all and she _tries_ to understand all the _avant garde_ technology she goes on and on about, but it isn’t the same. It just… never clicks.

Then again, maybe it’s just her. She doesn’t trust the members of Overwatch not to dabble with her ideas or try to alter them to their liking— as if her mech is their property, _their_ life-long pet project. (As if she’d ever let them lay a finger on her baby.)

At MEKA, cadets in the chemical engineering program never combated with each other, never shot down ideas, no matter how crazy. They built. They built and they problem solved until _someone_ had a solution.

The defense matrix? Someone mentioned once how badass it would be to shoot bullets out of thin air. Five days later, they had a prototype, 300 rubber pellets, and sixteen eager test pilots.

The self-destruct? A kid accidentally blew up their lunch one day working on a fusion trigger and three hours later they had a blueprint.

The satellite? A conjoined effort between the cadets and a hell of a lot of fundraisers but they made it work because _that_ was MEKA, trying and trying and becoming so innately _unpredictable_ until the Colossal Omnic was dead and their weapons were top of the line.

…In MEKA, she had a team. She had a _family_ there, wild and young and _that’s_ what had paved the path to victory in the end. In MEKA she had brainstorming sessions that could last anywhere from six in the evening to four in the morning the next day. In MEKA, she had a minibar in the mechanics lab that served shots of energy drinks and a 3D printer specifically made for pizza. In MEKA there had been no fear because there was nothing _to_ be afraid of— they were all the same young, reckless gamer with a big ego and bigger dreams.

Hell, she got the name D.Va from a game of beer pong that had gotten _wildly_ out of hand and ended with her standing on a model mech and drunkenly proclaiming herself “Queen of the Divas.”

A small smile graces her lips, and not even the plum tea can will the memories away. She tries not to think about how much she misses them. It has been a while since they last talked, with every communications channel being tracked and recorded down to a binary code, and she can’t jeopardize them like that, not with Talon on the loose.

MEKA is one of her greatest weaknesses, but it is, by far, her favorite.

She misses the freedom she’d had there. She misses the familiarity and the fearlessness, what it felt like to be young and headstrong. She misses… talking. And being able to.

In MEKA, there’s no fear of judgement. They had been a family— you could say anything and there wasn't pity, there were _solutions_. Because that was what they did, what they were hired to do— problem solve. And it's… it’s different with Overwatch. Hana feels choked of all resources and on edge and more than a little stepped on. 

(Because really, Winston isn’t subtle in the way he prods her to fund Overwatch but that money goes back to MEKA and rebuilding her home, first and foremost, no matter how noble he proclaims the cause to be. This isn’t about nobility. This is about _loyalty_.)

It’s… funny, almost. And it hurts. This is as close to home as she will probably get for a while, and it’s only Nepal. She understands what MEKA had been trying to do by signing her up for this, and she would die for them in a heartbeat but Overwatch is… something else. There are so many secrets between its members that she’s scared she’s going to choke on them someday. Everyone tells her it’ll all be fine, given time, but time was all it had taken for everything to fall apart in the first place.

It’s risky— too many outliers, too many bad endings and no restarts, and it’s sad that the only time she can let herself think of this is _now,_ when everyone else is asleep and she doesn't have to worry about getting caught in a civil war. If everything goes to hell she won’t die for Overwatch. She fights for her country, for her family of grease-monkeys and insomniacs and high-school rejects, not… whatever this is.

She knows she was a leader to them. She may not have been the designated ‘mom’ or ‘dad’ of the family but she was the spearhead. She was their voice and it keeps her up at night and _kills_ her because she hasn’t been able to contact them for _three months_ now and they are all she has.

She needs to know. How they are, what they are up to, _anything_. She just doesn't know how to get that information without breaking twenty-three laws, potentially revealing their position to Talon, _and_ risking getting herself court-martialed. Because her little ‘escapades' are only barely permitted, and to get to Busan in any way, shape, or form is going to involve crossing international borders which involves MEKA knowing where she is and she will end up in deep, deep trouble if they ever find out.

The main problem here is that she has become too big to erase herself.

Hana reaches for her mug with unseeing eyes and knocks it over instead, the porcelain clattering loudly against the metal of the table, the rest of her tea washing out onto the surface. She can’t bring herself to care, watching the dark liquid run across the tabletop until it slips off the edge with a numb feeling of loss unraveling deep in her chest.

Watchpoint: Kathmandu is quiet save for the _drip, drip, drip_ of the tea until there is nothing but silence, and she can’t remember is she has ever felt so alone. War has taken its toll on her and she hides it for them, for the world and for Overwatch, and she hadn’t realized how dependent she’d become on MEKA until her superiors cut that part of her away and sent her off to fight for an organization she isn't even sure won’t kill her.

It’s like the old saying says— “ _You don’t know what you've got until it’s gone_.”

Problem is, she _had_ known. She knows MEKA and that’s _all she knows_. And it’s—

She chokes, inhales deeply and focuses on what she thinks is Mount Everest in the distance but she can’t tell in the darkness.

MEKA is gone. For her, at least, and she doesn’t know how long she’ll have to stay here, or if she’s going to die before she sees them again and that’s all she fought for, really— freedom. The chance to go back to the only people she has ever really considered _her_ people and complain to them of all the horrors and drags of Overwatch.

And she will tell them about the watchpoints and Talon and how Winston tried to weasel his way into her wallet and they will all take one lookout her mech and tear it apart at the seams to see what she’s done and they will drink and toast to Nintendo or Solid Snake or something else equally ridiculous.

She just… wants to go home. Because no matter what Winston or Lena or anyone tells her, she knows. Overwatch will never be home to her.

And she tries, but it feels like that gut-wrenching feeling a kid gets when they find out they’re adopted— that feeling of not belonging, of needing to run but having nowhere to go, that void in her stomach when they try to treat her as if she’s been there all along but she _knows better_ and it feels _wrong_.

Does Overwatch even get holidays? She had been drafted in the early spring and has only been there for five months without a day off that she hasn’t stolen for herself. She will have to ask directly if she wants answers, which really isn’t an ideal option at this point.

Hana sighs and presses the palms of her hands against her eyes and wishes the ache in her heart would fade.

“Hana?”

Now, Hana isn't startled by the voice (the pranks wars back at MEKA had taught her better), but it _is_ unexpected. She doesn’t know why she had expected Zenyatta to be asleep, considering he is an omnic and everything and they don’t need to sleep. A minute fact her omnic roommate had told her back at the MEKA academy.

She removes her hands from her eyes, peering at the omnic with a brow quirked. It isn’t the most compromising situation she’s ever been caught in, leaning so far back on her chair it’s a miracle it hasn't tipped over yet with a mug of spilled tea left unattended on the other side of the table.

“Zen,” she says, feigning surprise, though she is more wary of his presence than anything. “Can I… help you?”

Zenyatta tilts his head, hands folded is his lap, and nothing about him gives any hint as to what he’s thinking in that moment.

“It is 1:48 in the morning,” he says at last.

Hana narrows her eyes. “Yeah, and?”

He says nothing, opting instead to simply look at her and it’s a _lot_ of things but unnerving is a pretty good start.

Zenyatta is… honestly? She doesn’t know much about Zenyatta other than he is an omnic of the Shambali order that had _some_ relation to Mondatta and that he’d saved Genji from his endless hole of self-loathing that the man had gotten himself into in the first place (she still isn’t sure how all that worked out but she doesn't really care anyways).

They aren’t friends, but Hana doesn't hate him. To be perfectly honest, Zenyatta, Fareeha, and Lena are the only ones she trusts not to kill her immediately if everything falls apart, so that’s as good an introduction as any.

Her patience wears thin at the four minute mark and he still hasn’t said anything. She sighs and the chair falls forward with a thud, her brows pinching together.

“Look, I’m sorry if I woke you up from your robo power-nap or whatever, but if you don’t need anything—“

“May I sit?” he asks, and Hana searches his face for all of two seconds before shrugging and motioning to the seat across the table. She doesn’t mention that he is already sitting, technically, because that is both obvious and rude, and she doesn’t know how Zenyatta feels about chairs anyhow, but her questions are quickly answered when he merely moves the chair out of the way to hover across from her.

All goes quiet again. She feels on edge. She doesn’t need to be doing this, she needs to be researching comm encryptions and how to either break the call tracer or fortify the line so that the tracer is rendered obsolete, not sit and play tea party with someone she hardly knows who won’t even tell her why he’s there.

“Do you remember Mondatta’s speeches?”

Hana frowns, not knowing where this is going, but complies anyways because her curiosity is getting the best of her. “Yeah, at the MEKA academy we’d play them on the big screen and take turns trying to impersonate him.” The memory is fond in her mind.

Zenyatta nods. “Very public, very… dogmatic. Universally accepted, for the most part. He was a brilliant public speaker with a brilliant mind and large dreams for the Omnic Rights movement.” He sighed. “I thought they were too big. I tried to warn him against that path. I told him it was too broad, too risky. It was in my personal beliefs that to move forward, change had to be more personal. He would not listen to me. And so, I left. I did not want to, but I was given no choice.”

It hits Hana like a slap in the face. There’s _no way_ she had been that transparent.

Zenyatta tilts his head towards the window. Kathmandu is dimmer, now. “Perhaps, if I had stayed, he would not have died. Perhaps a lot of things would have been different. We will never know.”

He turns back to her. “His death was a great loss to us all. The days after were harsh. But the world has begun to rebuild, stronger than ever, and there is something beautiful about that.”

She swallows hard and tries to banish MEKA from her mind.

“You know loss well, Hana Song. I see it in your eyes. I see the empty space. What have you lost?”

“A family,” she says, and she won’t choke up, she _knows_ better, but her soul aches with the admission. “ _My_ family. My purpose. My drive.” She laughs, tearing her gaze away from him to glare at the small, glimmering lights below. “What haven’t I lost?”

Zenyatta’s response is instantaneous. “Hope.”

Hana’s head snaps upwards. “I beg your pardon?”

“You sneak to the communications tower at night to fiddle with the encryptions. You want to go home. Every night, without fail, you go to those towers and you do the math. You dissect the code piece by piece and you won’t stop until you get an answer. That is hope. The hope to go home. And you hold on to it like a lifeline.”

Hana doesn't ask how he knows— she knows what the answer could be (and honestly thinks the truth is better left in the dark, anyhow), and instead swallows hard and nods because she can’t— _won’t_ trust her voice right now.

Zenyatta picks up the fallen mug and sets it upright in front of him, running his mechanical fingers along the rim. “I do not know the feeling, but it is understandable. It is unfair to speak of this while we rest in my homeland, I’m sure. I suppose there could be jealousy involved, as well. I will admit, I know little of you, Hana Song. Of what you really are. But I know pain and I want to help.” He looks up at her, and it feels like he is staring straight into her soul. “But do you _want_ my help? Now _that_ is the question.”

That it is. And it is a _loaded_ question. It carries weight. It feels almost monumental, in a way, and but it isn’t dire, and there is no pressure to say _yes_ , which is… nice. Appreciated. Zenyatta won’t force her into any decision she makes and she inwardly thanks him for it.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “I don’t know what to do. I— I need time. To think.”

He nods gently. “I understand. If you decide to carry on alone, I urge you to take caution. It will be difficult to do this without breaking the law.” A pause, thoughtful. “But necessary, if it comes to it,” he muses after a moment, and Hana’s brows shoot upwards. Of all the things she hadn't expected from him, this is _not_ on the list. Not even in the top ten.

Hana can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. “No way. You’re serious? I thought you’d be more by the books, like—“ she lowers her voice into an airy monotone. “‘There is honor in service, Hana Song. We must all make sacrifices for the greater good. What you’re doing is wrong and bad and against the law and you must let go of all distractions. And you must listen to _me_ because I’m six billion years old and my word is one-hundred percent wisdom.’”

And, honest to god, Zenyatta _laughs_.

(The sound is unfamiliar, but not at all unpleasant.)

“I assure you, Hana, I am not _that_ dull. Hopefully, I am not dull at all!” he manages as soon as his fit of giggles has tapered off. Zenyatta pauses, then, and Hana doesn't know whether it’s dramatic or a sign for trouble. “And I am only twenty.”

If Hana had been drinking something, she would have spit it.

“You’re kidding,” she gasps, gaping.

Zenyatta shakes his head and if he’d had a face in that moment, she is sure he would have been wearing the most self-satisfied grin.

“ _No,_ ” she says, but now she’s grinning, too.

“Yes. And I find it rather insulting that for someone my age, I have never _once_ played a game of beer pong.”

“You’re a monk!”

“A monk who has not played beer pong. A tragedy, really.”

Hana laughs in disbelief and she is so confused, so _dumbfounded_ by this person, but, as she has discovered in the ten minutes she’s known him, she rather likes Zenyatta’s company after all. He isn’t what she had expected but… maybe that’s a good thing. 

 _But he’s not MEKA, and he never will be_ , some part of her reminds herself. _He hasn’t seen what you’ve seen, hasn't danced on tabletops and shoved party streamers into prototype gun nozzle just for the heck of it. Hasn’t been to the late night Confession Sessions. He wasn’t there._ And that thought is what drives her to end their conversation, bidding the omnic a good night and willing herself to forget.

Forget the offer. Forget MEKA. Forget for _one night_ that her life is inescapable and Overwatch is just the icing on the cake.

Forget that she is 2,271 miles from home and that _that_ number is only going to grow from here on out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually rlly like this ship I can't believe I've never written for them before??? what a crime
> 
> My inspiration for this was basically binge-listening to lana del rey and the national which are both great 10/10 would recommend
> 
> And yet, despite that, the title is taken from "O Death" by Jen Titus.
> 
> See y'all next week or so.
> 
> \- ace.


End file.
